Our vehicle suddenly slows, then turns. And turns again. Mr. Max is heading home.
He must head elsewhere.
I leap atop the passenger seat back, howling my warning.
The car swerves as Mr. Max glances in his rear-and side-view mirrors. I see his eyes focused like black laser lights.
The car swerves again, executing a neat 180-degree turn so we are facing in the opposite direction.
Actually, I am facing the rear of the car, for I have been unceremoniously hurled into the foot well of the passenger seat, my shivs stapling nylon carpeting to keep myself from bouncing around a lowly space spiked with odd bits of gravel and scented with asphalt and used gum.
When the car stabilizes, I claw my way to the top of the passenger seat to see. There is nothing behind us but blackness.
I glance into the driver’s seat.
Mr. Max glances at me, but does not seem to really see me.
And then we barrel down the side streets in a zigzag pattern that would make a sidewinder snake dizzy, and suddenly we are shooting onto an entrance ramp to a freeway. Our speed matches the flow of traffic and then increases. And increases.
We weave in and out of lanes, passing every vehicle except, thank Bast, a highway patrol car. I see the single glareof the motorcycle headlight illuminating the car ceiling. Still we speed on. Soon we have slipped the surly bonds of the Nevada posted speed limits and left city and traffic far behind. And still we dodge the single light that clings like static electricity to every move we make.
Finally we screech into another 180-degree turn and immediately Mr. Max hits the gas so we are racing back in the direction from which we just fled, right into the light that has never failed to follow our every maneuver.
There is only one outcome for this showdown. High impact.
I no longer fear our one-eyed pursuer, but I think Mr. Max is trying to lurch me loose from my death grip on his interior upholstery, which is one of my favorite aromatic materials, leather.
Good luck.
It will give before I do.
Chapter 34
… Going to the Devil
Max hit the brakes until they screamed in the desert night like a puma. He turned around in a wide U on the deserted highway and retraced his path.
It had been the ultimate game of “Chicken.”
Maxima and Ninja at full throttle into each other.
Max had never wavered, but he was armored by a car.
Now he brought that car to a full stop and jerked the gears into Park. He hurtled out the passenger door, not bothering to shut it or think about anything but who and why.
Las Vegas was flatter than the proverbial pancake, but the car-motorcycle chase had driven deep into the desert where dry washes veined the landscape like seams in a golfer’s face.
The motorcycle, maneuvering to both dodge and confront a car that had just executed a sudden 180-degree turn, had spun out on the gravel, skittering over the concrete in the restless desert wind.
Max ran to the edge of the arroyo fifty feet from thehighway—that’s how far the motorcycle had sailed through the air—and looked down into the darkness.
Nothing to see now, but if the gas tank blew … he pulled out his cell phone, then realized it would leave a trail and snapped it shut again. Better find a pay phone at the nearest gas station, which might be miles away.
He slammed himself into the front seat and drew the door shut like a bank vault behind him.
He had forgotten what, or who, he had glimpsed in the car during the last, few, desperate seconds of maneuvering. The car seemed empty as he raced alone over unlit asphalt, eyes on the faint dotted line of the two-lane highway. The creature, black as a skunk, was gone now. Midnight Louie, believe it or not. Or not. Or had it been a racoon? Something black and masked about the face. He had only glimpsed it as a scrabbling form in the dark.
On the other hand, he had no doubt about the motorcycle rider, who had reacted a split second too slowly to his latest evasive maneuvers. That was the way of war and races: move fast or spin out permanently. He couldn’t be dead sure of that person’s identity, but he had a gut feeling exactly who it was: the elusive easy rider who had creased his scalp with a bullet weeks ago, who had been dogging Matt Devine at the radio station, who had sailed into an unexpected off-road experience.
He doubted that any emergency vehicle he could call to this site could save anything, not even a guilty conscience. Still, he memorized the first highway marker he came to, and pushed the pedal to the floor. The Maxima leaped like a jackrabbit to the charge as he aimed for a faint line of gas-station neon maybe five miles away.
Chapter 35
… Roadrunner
Ouch! There is nothing out here but cat-claw cactus and it is digging directly between my toes on every step.
It was no big decision what to do when Mr. Max played spin-the-bottle with the motorcycle and won, brakes down.
As he bailed out of the car to check on the damage, I bailed out right behind him.
I stare down at the dried-out wash, gazing at one red taillight.
It is not the motorcyclist I fret about. I knew who it was and I am not sorry to see Mr. Max decide to leave, and no doubt find an anonymous phone upon which to report this fatal accident so long overdue. I know how this dude thinks: like I do, were anyone human ever to realize that I do think.
Right now I am thinking that if Miss Kitty O’Connor has truly clawed her last, I am not about to let any tears soak into my best black lace jabot. She was not exactly a friend to me and mine.
However, I have one nagging worry. Let us just say that I have a nagging nagger nowadays. The last thing I did indelegating power this evening was to tell my junior partner to tail Miss Kitty O’Connor. I do not doubt my order was heeded.
Ergo, Miss Midnight Louise was likely on the motorcycle when it made its Evel Knievel leap to fame and future forensics examination.
Well, one cannot have an associate gasping out her last on the sere desert sands. Since nothing I would or could manage to do with a cell phone can offer an iota of good at the accident scene, I hurl myself down the crotchety incline, avoiding cacti all the way.
Such a path is hard on the unprotected pads, let me tell you. I had never expected to be an upside-down pincushion, but it is in that condition in which I finally catapult to the bottom.
My nose tells me my first worry is well placed. Raw gasoline is one of the strongest odors on the planet, and it hangs in a nasal miasma over the crash scene.
One spark and everything in the vicinity is instant barbecue.
So I pause before approaching nearer to observe the scene.
The motorcycle is on its side, a spray of broken-off accessories pluming over the sand. Broken glass sparkles from the moon-glow high above.
The rider lies fifteen feet away, limbs turned at angles even the most agile alley cat could not manage while in a living, breathing condition. The helmet has rolled like an obsidian pumpkin to the foot of a huge Joshua tree cactus a couple yards away.
“Louise,” I call plaintively.
Something in the distance answers me with an arpeggio of yips ending in a howl. Coyotes. I wonder if Mr. Max will return to the accident scene, or if he will only lurk at a distance, as I would, to see the ambulance come and go.
Probably. I pause by the fallen figure’s head. The skin looks dead in the moonlight and snaky threads of black hair cross the forehead and cheek. Some of them, I sniff on closer examination, are tendrils of blood.
I paw delicately at the motionless mouth, my shortest hairs unstirred by any breath or breeze.
It is a still night in the desert, in more ways than one. I do not hear any feline complaints either.
Nervous as I am, I must approach the fallen vehicle. If Louise had hitchhiked a ride with Kitty the Cutter, she would have needed to do what I have done before: ride in a saddlebag.
One of these handy black-leather pockets faces up at the star-pocked night sky. I examine it with mitt and nose and even tongue. Its exterior buckles are closed. I doubt the dead woman would have overlooked Miss Midnight Louise inside and buckled her in.